Crossroads...

Sometimes in life you come to a crossroads.  You have to make a choice.  

And all choices lead to changes.

Kinda intimidating, isn't it?

I went someplace pretty today!

To a park up in Maryland.  And then to an Asian restaurant...but I didn't take any pictures of that. :) 

And as usual I took about 5 million pictures of where I was.  I love being in new places where there are lots of pretty things to photograph.

Tonight was nice. I went over to Jacqueline's and Matt's tonight for Bible study. It was smaller than usual tonight, but it was nice. Before and after the study Jacqueline and I watched Cirque de Soleil's Allegria. I hadn't watched it since we lived at the old house. It was fun. It brought back memories of when all I really wanted to be was a Riverdancer and a contortionist. Life was so simple.

I had an interview today for a photo studio. Actually, all I did was fill out the application. I had set up an interview for another day, but ended up calling it off. I decided I didn't like the environment and am going to give the Etsy shop idea a go first. And also I am really excited about this opportunity to be home for a while. I'm already planning to go:
walking (hopefully every day) down at the park with my sister.
Spending more time with Hank (our weimaraner puppy).
I told Holly we could stay up late every night this summer and watch movies if she wants because I'm usually saying I have to go to bed so I can go to work.
Study my Bible and my nutrition course.
And of course trying to get up ideas of things to make to put in my shop...once I set it up.

There will be plenty of time to worry about jobs. I'm just going to try to enjoy my family and friends for a while before I get back to a regular job. And also, I hate to get a new job and have to train for it and then just move. But then I don't know how soon I will be moving...it's back and forth a lot for me.

We kept Hope for Jacqueline today and also Andy and Becky's kids. It was so fun being with them. I'm going to miss those guys. I'm glad we got to spend some time with them this weekend.

We are selling our house.

Hi! Do you want to see our house? Great! But there is a little something you should know before we proceed any further.

Just thought I should warn you. Let's get a little closer.

It's so pretty out here.

You want to talk about craftsmanship? My brother-in-law pretty much built this entire house by himself.  He, my brother Adam, and various family members and friends who pitched in along the way.  And when we were in a time crunch, we got a couple of crews to drywall and mud for us.  But it was mostly done without a lot of extra help.  I hate mudding and sanding walls. I helped finish our basement at our old house and we did all of that. It's a yucky job! Dust gets everywhere and you never seem to completely get it out.  Anyway, I probably would have been in there mudding and sanding but I was finishing my semester at school and working full-time.  
We are getting ready to put up pictures on the web for a real estate site and these are a couple that I took.

Anyway, those are a few pictures of the house. :)

Ouch...that hurts!

My teeth that is. You probably knew this post was coming. Where I complain about how painful braces are. But the truth is I'm not going to say a word about how bad it hurts. I'm not even going to talk about how it's rubbing the inside of my cheek off. Nope. Not a single word.

:)

But I'll tell you about getting them on. See, it's fun for the first hour or so. Before the unmentioned pain sets in.

On Friday I drove out to my orthodontist's office. I was getting my lower braces on! Woo hoo!
(See, now I really can't close my mouth. Not enough room.)

Progress! I should find my before photo and scan it in here. But I don't know where that photo is and we don't have a scanner anyway so I can't.

While I was working at the dentist office, I got my braces. And so did one of our hygienists and the doctor I worked with. In fact, my doctor was only about 3 weeks ahead of me in the whole braces schedule. We all saw the same orthodontist and since we all had the same schedule at work, we all got Friday appointments. So we usually ended up at the office on the same day at the same time. It was kind of funny.
So on Friday, it turned out that my doctor had her appointment at 12 and mine was at 12:30. And we saw each other. I walked back into the operatory and the assistant who was going to be working on my teeth said, "your doctor is over there if you want to say hi before we start." Sure enough, she was in the chair so I walked over and waved. "Hello. I didn't recognize you on that end."
"Haa," (hi) she replied.
You see, it's hard to talk when someone has their hands in your mouth.
So I went over to my chair and they started to place brackets on my lower teeth. Oh, but before that, they put those awful cheek retractor things in. The ones that feel like they're going to split your face apart. I think those are partly for their amusement cause you look really funny while you wear them. Anyway, while they were doing that my doctor finished her appointment and walked over to my chair to say hello.
"Haa," (hi) I said back.
"I'm going to wait for you till you're done, okay?" She said.
"Uguh," (okay) I replied.


We ended up getting lunch and she came back to my house to meet my dogs. Solomon (as always) seemed to be the favorite. It was a fun morning.

The next day I went out with my sisters. Jacqueline had some errands she needed to run and I needed to stop by the eye doctor to ask about getting contacts. Cause I said I'd never wear braces and glasses together and then I did. I also needed dental wax which is very hard to find. If you need it, go to your local CVS. That's where I eventually found mine. I went to Walmart and Martins and they didn't have it. Walmart used to have it, but doesn't anymore.
Holly came with us and we ended up getting strawberry frappes and a strawberry banana smoothie before we came home. I love being with my sisters. They really are my closest friends.

I'm actually getting used to the idea of being home more and am going to try to do some of the things I always claimed I was too busy to do when I was working full-time. Like read a classic, study my nutrition course, spend time with the dogs, go to the park, craft, pull out my violin and practice it, etc. Adam has been getting on youtube and looking up guitar lessons on it and I might see if they have violin lessons on there. I played the violin for 2 years and have a very pretty violin that my parents bought me. We named it The Curly Maple. But I very rarely ever play it. Maybe I'll try to work on that this summer. I'm going to try to view this layoff as an opportunity from God to relax and do some of these things instead of always worrying about my job. And I'm still really thinking of opening an Etsy shop and trying to bring in a little income with that. And eventually I may get a part-time job, but I'm going to wait a little bit first.

So it's really been a nice weekend so far.
Happy Memorial Day!

Cards

I blogged about making these cards awhile ago. It was a really nice time spent with my sisters. My mom enjoys stamping too. She didn't join us for that stamping session though.





I have 50 more cards along with whatever leftovers we had from the last time we stamped and some new papers to use to make some more of these. Can you guess what I'll probably end up doing this week?

My man Friday...

I tried to sleep in really late, but got up at 8:15.  The sun is shining really brightly outside and it's hard to sleep really late when it's so bright out.  It's really pretty actually.  We're supposed to have 70-80 degree weather this weekend.

So recap on the events of the week:  I can't even remember what happened Monday.  Tuesday was nice.  I always like Bible study nights.  We had a full group over next door for the study and it's always fun to see everyone there.  And I finished my chiropractor appointments too.  I'm supposed to go back in a month to see how I'm doing with the exercises and stretches they taught me. 

Wednesday we had a call saying someone was going to come see the house.  It was a good showing.  The people had some questions and showed some interest.  It was encouraging.  

Yesterday I already said I got laid off.  

Today I get my lower braces on.  :)  And they said they were supposed to add to my bite plane to make it bigger.  I'm not going to be able to close my mouth, lol.  I'm so excited that this is moving along and it's neat to get to see progress.  

I've been running through some ideas of what to do during the weeks and am considering opening an etsy shop.  Maybe it will motivate me to sew and craft some more.  That was actually my reason for starting this blog. I think it's turned into a journal more than anything.  I didn't really have a whole lot of time during the week but now I will.  

Fuel is $3.99 a gallon here.  For regular unleaded.  They say it's supposed to be about $7 a gallon by the end of the year.  Maybe we should all buy bicycles. :)  I've heard a lot of talk about bicycles lately, but it's really impractical where we live now.  Actually, there aren't a lot of places anymore that are set up for bike traffic.  So skip that idea.  Maybe we should get Segways.  That's a better idea! LoL~

Tonight I came home from work with tears in my eyes and a red nose. I walked in the door, hugged my mom, refused dinner, drank a pint of unsweetened iced tea, ate 3 Hershey nuggets and then decided I NEEDED chocolate ice cream so my dad and I went and got some. Tonight I was laid off from my job. WAHHH!!!

It was very sweet actually. They all told me I was wonderful and terrific and awesome and perfect (you get the picture, right? Okay it wasn't all that, but they did say I was a really great worker who was enthusiastic and motivated blah blah blah and stuff like that) and they hated to let me go but I'm moving anyway and with my doctor leaving they just can't keep 4 assistants.
I kinda knew it was coming, but it was still a little surprising. And I was even okay with it right until one of the girls got a little teary-eyed (tears of job most likely! lol). You know how it is. If one girl cries it's very likely to set off every other girl in the room. Or me at least. Luckily nothing like that happened. I was mostly sad because I will miss everyone so much. But I have a bunch of email addresses and phone numbers and we've set up a lunch get-together. Working there was a great opportunity. I'm very glad I got to work there. But honestly, I have complete peace about it. I really believe that everything and anything that happens is God's will. And that's enough for me right now. So I was okay until the very end when even his wife came in and gave me a hug and said she was sad about it and they'll miss me. And then when I got in the car I cried a little because we girls are emotional creatures and every major event deserves to be endured with some kind of emotional act. (If anyone understands any of that let me know and explain it to me, lol) But I made myself stop because I was afraid I'd back into another grill or something. We don't need a repeat of that.

Okay, I'm done.

Prince Caspian

It was okay. Edmund was more likeable in this one. He was a brat in the last movie. There was some other stuff in it too that I didn't care for. Like pretty much everything you said, Becky. And I didn't like the end so much. I don't think it was in the book (especially the pop sounding song). Maybe I should go back and re-read them. I liked the first Narnia movie better. I want to see Ember when it comes out. It was a good book. I'd recommend it.

Dad told me tonight that I really did break the grill when I backed into it this winter. One of the knobs fell off and is cracked and I think I broke one of the legs. Or something like that. That was a sad experience. I was upset because they told me they were selling Hank (our dog) right before I was about to leave for work one morning. For some reason the night before I didn't pull into the driveway, I backed in. So when I got in the car my first instinct was to put the car in reverse and back up. So that's what I did. When I realized that I was supposed to go forward I tried to slam on the brake, but slammed on the gas instead and shot backwards into the grill. I felt really bad about it. Especially when I came home and saw my mom making hamburgers on the cast iron skillet since she couldn't use the grill. Recently I overheard my dad on the phone with his friend. His friend asked if he would be doing any grilling soon (since the weather is finally warming up) and my dad said, "no, Grace ran over the grill." He was very calm about it. I was very blessed. My parents weren't really mad that I hit their grill with their car. They just told me it is stupid to drive when you're upset because bad things can happen when you're not paying attention. In the end I offered to buy them a new grill and they laughed at me. And we didn't sell Hank. It made me feel like the biggest creep ever. Not fun.

They weren't mad the time I brushed the curb and blew out my tire either. Luckily I made it to the first baptist church up the road where a couple of very kind ladies tried to patch it up with medical tape. It wasn't working and I didn't realize that there was a spare tire inside the floor of the car and I didn't know how to change a tire anyway, so they let me borrow a cell phone so I could call my dad. And even then he wasn't mad that I hit the curb. Just that I forgot my cell phone. Luckily the car was okay through it all anyway.

I don't know why I even wrote all this. Mostly for lack of having nothing better to say. I tried to work on some projects today and didn't finish anything. So maybe next week I'll have something to write about. Sorry for 3 posts in one day.

An interesting site...

Since my trip to Shaharazades with Becca, I've been wanting to learn more about tea and I've also been wanting to make scones like the kind they had there. I saw a box mix for scones at the coffee shop I used to work at, but decided to look online for recipes before I tried their mix. I haven't tried any recipes yet, but I found this website that talks about tea and they have scone recipes. I thought I'd put it up here in case any of you guys wanted to see it.